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Researchers have developed tiny, diamond-based probes that optically transmit detailed temperature information and can operate in conditions ranging from 150 - 850 degrees Kelvin.

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A new study, published in the journal Chaos, suggests that unusually persistent spatial structures that self-assemble high in the atmosphere serve as “tracer patterns” around which atmospheric rivers grow. Based on simulations using real weather data in the Atlantic Ocean, the work was focused specifically on the transport of water from the Caribbean to the Iberian Peninsula, but it suggests a more general way to study the transport of tropical water vapor globally.

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Materials melt faster when the lines of heat spread through the cold material like the branches of a tree -- and the melting rate can be steadily increased by allowing the tree architecture to freely evolve over time, researchers have discovered. The finding could help improve phase change energy storage systems, and could play an important role in ensuring a smooth flow of energy from renewable sources. The researchers report the results in the Journal of Applied Physics.

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A team of IBM researchers in Zurich, Switzerland with support from colleagues in Yorktown Heights, New York has developed a relatively simple, robust and versatile process for growing crystals made from compound semiconductor materials that will allow them be integrated onto silicon wafers -- an important step toward making future computer chips that will allow integrated circuits to continue shrinking in size and cost even as they increase in performance.

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A team of researchers in China set out to design a cheaper material with properties similar to a graphene aerogel—in terms of its conductivity, as well as a lightweight, anticorrosive, porous structure. In the journal Applied Physics Letters, the researchers describe the new material they created and its performance.

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Canadian researchers are studying the role that methane nanobubbles might play in the formation and dissociation of natural gas hydrates, a currently untapped source of natural gas and a chief energy source in the United States. Gaining a better understanding of how nanobubbles impact their formation and dissociation could help design procedures to more efficiently and safely harvest hydrates for natural gas capture. The findings are published this week in The Journal of Chemical Physics.

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Working with a device that slightly resembles a microscopically tiny tuning fork, researchers at the University of Tsukuba in Japan have recently developed coupled microcantilevers that can make mass measurements on the order of nanograms with only a 1 percent margin of error -- potentially enabling the weighing of individual molecules in liquid environments. The findings are published this week in Applied Physics Letters.

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NanoMRI is a scanning technique that produces nondestructive, high-resolution 3-D images of nanoscale objects, and promises to become a powerful tool. Producing images with near-atomic resolution, however, is difficult and time-consuming. Striving to overcome this limitation, researchers have developed a parallel measurement technique, which they report in Applied Physics Letters. Information that normally would be measured sequentially -- one bit after another -- can now be measured at the same time with a single detector.

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The American Institute of Physics (AIP) announced today that it has selected applied physicist Robert G.W. Brown as its new Chief Executive Officer.

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Researchers have held tremendous interest in liquid metal electronics for many years, but a significant and unfortunate drawback slowing the advance of such devices is that they tend to require external pumps that can't be easily integrated into electronic systems. So a team of North Carolina State University researchers set out to create a reconfigurable liquid metal antenna controlled by voltage only, which they describe this week in the Journal of Applied Physics.

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Graphene takes an important step toward commercial applications like wearable wireless devices and sensors connected to the "Internet of Things"

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Bo Persson, a scientist at the Jülich Research Center in Germany, and his colleagues have now uncovered new velocity and temperature-dependent properties of rubber friction on asphalt -- bolstering the idea that an important component of friction originates when chains of rubber molecules repeatedly stick to the road, stretch, and then release.

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According to a new study in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, Chinook winds can precede large shifts in wind power output from wind farms -- a challenge for companies seeking to provide a constant stream of green energy to consumers. By establishing a connection between local meteorological events and power grid output, the researchers hope that they may ultimately help grid operators more accurately predict fluctuations in flow and manage the grid accordingly.

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An international team of scientists has designed and tested a magnetic shield that is the first to achieve an extremely low magnetic field over a large volume. The device provides more than 10 times better magnetic shielding than previous state-of-the art shields. The record-setting performance makes it possible for scientists to measure certain properties of fundamental particles at higher levels of precision -- which in turn could reveal previously hidden physics and set parameters in the search for new particles.

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The onion, a humble root vegetable, is proving its strength outside the culinary world -- in an artificial muscle created from onion cells. Unlike previous artificial muscles, this one, created by researchers from National Taiwan University, can either expand or contract to bend in different directions depending on the driving voltage applied. The finding is published this week in the journal Applied Physics Letters.

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Conventional semiconductor detectors made from germanium and silicon are standard equipment in nuclear physics, but are less useful in many emerging applications because they require low temperatures to operate. In recent years, scientists have been seeking new semiconductor materials to develop high-performance radiation detectors that can operate at room temperature, and now researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory think they have a good candidate material: a compound called thallium sulfide iodide.

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In a paper appearing this week in the Journal of Applied Physics, a team of researchers at Georgia Tech Research Institute and Honeywell International have demonstrated a new device that allows more electrodes to be placed on a chip -- an important step that could help increase qubit densities and bring us one step closer to a quantum computer that can simulate molecules or perform other algorithms of interest.

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The following articles are freely available online from Physics Today (www.physicstoday.org), the world's most influential and closely followed magazine devoted to physics and the physical science community.

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A new technique for visualizing the rapidly changing electronic structures of atomic-scale materials as they twist, tumble and traipse across the nanoworld is taking shape at the California Institute of Technology. There, researchers have for the first time successfully combined two existing methods to visualize the structural dynamics of a thin film of graphite.

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The secret desire of urban daydreamers staring out their office windows at the sad brick walls of the building opposite them may soon be answered thanks to transparent light shutters developed by a group of researchers in South Korea. A novel liquid crystal technology allows displays to flip between transparent and opaque states -- hypothetically letting you switch your view in less than a millisecond from urban decay to the Chesapeake Bay.

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A team of researchers from National Tsing Hua University and the National Health Research Institutes in Taiwan has developed a technique to more effectively grow and screen embryos prior to implantation.

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From noise in buildings and open park spaces to musical instruments, human voices and the vocalizations of animals on the ground, in the air and underwater, the science of sound is all around. The world's largest scientific meeting devoted to this fascinating, many-faceted field of acoustics will take place next month in Pittsburgh.

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Recently, a group of researchers at Delft University of Technology has pioneered a method that allows silicon itself, in the polycrystalline form used in circuitry, to be produced directly on a substrate from liquid silicon ink with a single laser pulse -- potentially ousting its pale usurpers. They discuss their research this week in Applied Physics Letters.

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A simple structure of bi-colored balls made of tough, inexpensive materials is well suited for large handwriting-enabled e-paper displays

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In this week’s Applied Physics Letters, researchers from Thailand and Japan describe the first known demonstration of 3-D cell imaging using picosecond ultrasonics, and show that picosecond ultrasonics can achieve micron resolution of single cells, imaging their interiors in slices separated by 150 nanometers. This work is a proof-of-principle that may open the door to new ways of studying the physical properties of living cells by imaging them in vivo.

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A team of Finnish scientists has found a new way to examine the ancient art of putting ink to paper in unprecedented 3-D detail. The technique could improve scientists' understanding of how ink sticks to paper and ultimately lead to higher quality, less expensive and more environmentally-friendly printed products.

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This week in the journal Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing, researchers from the University of Waterloo in Canada report a novel design for electromagnetic energy harvesting based on the "full absorption concept." This involves the use of metamaterials that can be tailored to produce media that neither reflects nor transmits any power—enabling full absorption of incident waves at a specific range of frequencies and polarizations.

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Recently, researchers at Fudan University's Institute of Biomedical Sciences in Shanghai developed a lab-on-a-chip device that can rapidly diagnose cryptosporidium infections from just a finger prick -- potentially bringing point-of-care diagnosis to at-risk areas in rural China in order to improve treatment outcomes.

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A big barrier to building useful electronics with carbon nanotubes has always been the fact that when they're arrayed into films, a certain portion of them will act more like metals than semiconductors. But now a team of researchers have shown how to strip out the metallic carbon nanotubes from arrays using a relatively simple, scalable procedure that does not require expensive equipment. Their work is described this week in the Journal of Applied Physics.

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In the Journal of Applied Physics, a group of researchers from Durham University in the U.K. and the University of São Paulo-USP in Brazil describes using single-walled carbon nanotube composites (SWCNTs) as a material in “unconventional” computing. By studying the mechanical and electrical properties of the materials, they discovered a correlation between SWCNT concentration/viscosity/conductivity and the computational capability of the composite.

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The following articles are freely available online from Physics Today (www.physicstoday.org), the world's most influential and closely followed magazine devoted to physics and the physical science community.

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Most often on Twitter, those we engage with are like-minded, and the ensuing electronic maelstrom of 140-character missives serves to reinforce, pulling us and them further along in the direction we were already trending toward. All that sound and fury can signify something, however: researchers in Spain have recently developed a model to detect the extent to which a conversation on Twitter -- and thus the actual offline argument and political climate -- is polarized.

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By studying the morphology and physiology of plants with tiny conical “hairs” or microfibers on the surface of their leaves, such as tomatoes, balsam pears and the flowers Berkheya purpea and Lychnis sieboldii, a team of researchers in Japan uncovered water collection-and-release secrets that may, in turn, one day soon “bioinspire” a technology to pull fresh water from the air to help alleviate global water shortages.

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In the Journal of Applied Physics, from AIP Publishing, a team of researchers from Technical University of Denmark report that the elastocaloric effect opens the door to alternative forms of solid-state refrigeration that are direct replacements for vapor compression technology.

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Attempting to develop a novel type of permanent magnet, a team of researchers at Trinity College has discovered a new class of magnetic materials based on Mn-Ga alloys. Described as a zero-moment half metal this week in the journal Applied Physics Letters, the new Mn2RuxGa magnetic alloy has some unique properties that give it the potential to revolutionize data storage and significantly increase wireless data transmission speeds.

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A collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford University may be poised to shake things up in the solar energy world. By exploring ways to create solar cells using low-cost manufacturing methods, the team has developed a novel prototype device that combines perovskite with traditional silicon solar cells into a two-terminal "tandem" device.

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Researchers from Canada are developing new methods to mass-produce a material that may help pedestrians get a better grip on slippery surfaces after such storms.

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Software from the aerospace industry has allowed an interdisciplinary team of U.K. researchers to design Arterio-Venous Fistulae with better, less unnatural flow patterns, which may reduce failure rates and improve clinical outcomes for patients with kidney failure who require dialysis.

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Devastating floodwaters such as those experienced during Iowa's Flood of 2008 are notoriously difficult to predict. So a team of University of Iowa mathematicians and hydrologists collaborating with the Iowa Flood Center set out to gain a better understanding of flood genesis and the factors impacting it. They were able to do this by zeroing in on the impacts of certain rainfall patterns at the smallest unit of a river basin: the hillslope scale.

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Researchers from Cornell University have synthesized a new thin-film catalyst for use in fuel cells. In a paper published March 10 in the journal APL Materials, from AIP Publishing, the team reports the first-ever epitaxial thin-film growth of Bi2Pt2O7 pyrochlore, which could act as a more effective cathode -- a fundamental electrode component of fuel cells from which positive current flows through an external circuit delivering electric power.

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Many scientists are working to develop green, lightweight, low-cost supercapacitors with high performance, and now two researchers from the S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, India, have developed a novel supercapacitor electrode based on a hybrid nanostructure made from a hybrid nickel oxide-iron oxide exterior shell and a conductive iron-nickel core. Its core/shell structure could mean faster charging time and longer battery life in electric vehicles and portable electronics.

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The following articles are freely available online from Physics Today (www.physicstoday.org), the world's most influential and closely followed magazine devoted to physics and the physical science community.

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Thanks to the work of an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the Dartmouth Center of Nanotechnology Excellence, funded by the National Institutes of Health, the next-generation magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) may soon be treating deep-seated and difficult-to-reach tumors within the human body.

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By examining the forces that the segments of mosquito legs generate against a water surface, researchers at the China University of Petroleum (Huadong) and Liaoning University of Technology have unraveled the mechanical logic that allows the mosquitoes to walk on water, which may help in the design of biomimetic structures, such as aquatic robots and small boats.

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A new study from a team of researchers in California and Japan shows that OLEDs made with finely patterned structures can produce bright, low-power light sources, a key step toward making organic lasers. The results are reported in a paper appearing this week on the cover of the journal Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing.

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Carrying a cup of coffee can be precarious for a sleepy-eyed caffeine addict who might accidentally send a wave of java sloshing over the rim, but add some foam and the trip becomes easier. New research shows that just a few layers of bubbles can significantly dampen the sloshing motion of liquid, and it may have applications far beyond breakfast beverages, including the safer transport of liquefied gas in trucks and propellants in rocket engines.

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Newly developed tiny antennas, likened to spotlights on the nanoscale, offer the potential to measure food safety, identify pollutants in the air and even quickly diagnose and treat cancer, according to the Australian scientists who created them. In the Journal of Applied Physics, they describe these and other envisioned applications for their nanocubes in "laboratories-on-a-chip."

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A group of researchers in Tunisia and Algeria show how fuzzy logic has helped them create an ideal photovoltaic system that obeys the supply-and-demand principle and its delicate balance. They describe this new sizing system of a solar array and a battery in a standalone photovoltaic system in The Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy.

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Compact, sensitive and fast nanodetectors are considered to be somewhat of a "Holy Grail" sought by many researchers around the world. And now a team of scientists in Italy and France has been inspired by nanomaterials and has created a novel solid-state technology platform that opens the door to the use of terahertz (THz) photonics in a wide range of applications.

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A team of researchers from the University of Michigan and Western Michigan University is exploring new materials that could yield higher computational speeds and lower power consumption, even in harsh environments.